Triathlon Stockholm and Edmonton Championships

It appears that the main sponsors and the ITU finally are moving forward to evolve triathlon from runners to a swim, bike and run sport.  The courses, even that are flat, they can have many turns as it happened in Stockholm, or hilly as it will be the case in Edmonton.  This format is more appealing from the point of view of spectators (economy), competitors and skills for newcomers.  Auckland was the first one of these courses; Kitzbuhel was added but changed the course lately.  Biking takes years to improve as well as swimming and running, but let’s take a look at the last Auckland World Series to have an idea who the top 10 will be:

1	Javier	Gomez Noya	ESP		01:54:13	00:17:53	00:00:53	01:04:15	00:00:28	00:30:42
2	Jonathan	Brownlee	GBR		01:54:33	00:17:51	00:00:52	01:04:19	00:00:26	00:31:03
3	Aaron	Royle	AUS		01:55:49	00:18:02	00:00:54	01:04:07	00:00:29	00:32:16
4	Dan	Wilson	AUS		01:55:52	00:18:04	00:00:52	01:04:04	00:00:26	00:32:24
5	Ryan	Bailie	AUS		01:55:59	00:18:03	00:00:54	01:04:05	00:00:27	00:32:27
6	Ryan	Sissons	NZL		01:56:23	00:18:46	00:00:54	01:03:24	00:00:29	00:32:48
7	Vincent	Luis	FRA		01:56:30	00:18:02	00:00:53	01:04:08	00:00:29	00:32:55
8	Mario	Mola	ESP		01:56:36	00:18:24	00:00:51	01:05:43	00:00:27	00:31:09
9	Richard	Varga	SVK		01:56:37	00:17:47	00:00:55	01:04:20	00:00:30	00:33:02
10	Gregor	Buchholz	GER		01:56:39	00:18:49	00:00:51	01:05:18	00:00:26	00:31:12

We saw what the Brownlees did at Stockholm; they rode their bikes and ran as in training.  Alistair let Johnny enter first as a good sportsman; if you help the leader, the leader should let you win the stage (in this case Johnny has the chance of winning the series).  The chasing pack fought for the third place expecting that somebody would sacrifice to catch the Brownlees, but nothing happened and they fought for third.

Kudos to Sarah Groff who after eight years of competing is finding the gear needed to win; she won in Stockholm brilliantly.  I remembered her running in Ixtapa; she was coming from a swimming background after finishing College.

2007 Ixtapa ITU Aquathlon World Championships : May 12 2007 : Elite Women : Results

  

Principio del formulario

Final del formulario

Pos	First Name	Last Name	Country		Time	Run	T1	Swim	T2	Run
1	Sarah	Groff	USA		00:32:52	00:08:54	00:00:19	00:14:05	00:00:29	00:09:05

Triathlon and the Art of Coaching III

We start with the same introduction of the previous posts (I), (2):

7 oct. 2013

TRIATHLON AND THE ART OF COACHING

I heard a friend saying: “I do not know a coach who has crafted champions from scratch more than once.”  We went over several coaches, but we had difficulties finding coaches not just in triathlon but in any sport.  They do exist!  There are not as many as we would like to believe.  I thought about Javier Gómez’ coach and believed that he is a good advisor which Gómez needs at this time of his career.  Gómez was born in Switzerland and his family learned something there that helped at this point of his life.  I thought about the Brownlees. His father is a doctor and ran competitively when in College; his mother is a former competitive swimmer.  The Brownlees have several coaches depending on the different triathlon segments.  Bob Bowman grew old with Michael Phelps; he even had a house next to Michael’s.  Crafting a champion needs a coach, a family and a culture since they are born in order to be successful.  It is necessary to be at the right place at the right time when all those three ingredients are ready. Bowman worked pretty hard raising Michael from scratch, as he puts it: “Coaching Debbie (Michael’s mother) was even more difficult than coaching Michael.”  He has had a few others swimmers but none of them was really crafted by him.  The three ingredients mentioned above need the same level of education; meaning the same guidelines to follow in our thought process.

What is what we need to teach?  What makes this environment unique?  There is a good book that has a provocative name: “The Art of Thinking Clearly,” written by a Swiss, Rolf Dobelli. The book gives guidelines to learn in order to think clearly, guidelines needed if we want to be successful.  Several similar books have been written dealing with the issue of what to teach.

I found interviews with the author in the internet and it is obvious; the coach should know that a family and a competitive culture are needed to create champions.  We started by creating an environment, which has been always evolving, to then “think” about creating champions. 

We started with our fourth generation of kids aspiring to be champions.  They are created as triathletes but interestingly they all run faster than just runners with the triathlon program; they all are fast riding the bike.  The 11 year old runs the mile in 5:40; the just turned 13 years of age runs a mile in 5:15; and the 13 years old going into 14 runs the 3k in 9:17.  The younger boys started swimming at six and seven years of age respectively, and comfortably can do 9 hours of swimming/week in addition of biking and running.  The older boy started swimming at the age of 13 and his skills are behind compared to the other two.  They all went to National Series Championship at Veracruz and ended in first, third and second of their categories.  It means that we have reached the podium on the first three categories for males; the next category is junior and we have a year before entering.

At this point we have the competitive culture needed but we are working on how to improve the perception of the family over what quality means.  How to improve the standards of quality of the family?  This process is extremely important; it is where we have failed in the past.  We believed that we were on the same page but they were sabotaging their growing up because they did not have the standards to succeed, i.e., the RAM if you wish.

3 août 2014

Triathlon and RAM (Random Access Memory)

Knowing what we know, should we stop trying? Nope, looking and living our own evolution is “living life.”  We will just try different strategies.